Gravitation
by The Heavens' Answer
Summary: Celeste measures moments against the distance she's traveled. It's only natural in her line of work. But there are some things that can't be measured, and some things she can't outrun.


_**GRAVITATION**_

* * *

sniperct prompt 1:_ the first time celeste realized she was in love with faith_

* * *

**[50.9 km / 31.6 miles] **

Merc, he's a big guy. His broad shoulders and iron rod posture familiar to the weight from the chains of commanding. But he hides it well. You feel the atmosphere change the minute you set your foot into the small, but cozy den. The casual trance of the music underscoring the hum of the monitors and systems rigged from wall to wall. There are more runners than you thought there'd be. Their unease and distrust makes you feel like you've gate-crashed a family reunion. From what you've heard of this group though - what you see is pretty much what you're getting.

When you first lay eyes on her she's sitting off to the site, near the window, and barely looks over when Merc introduces you and the runners come up one by one to greet you. The one called Jacknife, holds your hands a bit too long, and eyes you from an angle that makes your skin crawl. You know his type. But you're all smiles and hair-tossing nervous laughter to throw him off your scent. Make him believe, fool him. He will underestimate you. They always do.

Then you meet Drake and Leaf and Kreeg and they seem nice enough on the surface. But you're the new blood, and they're the pack of wolves sniffing you out with veiled but probing questions and rolling laughter that grates at your nerves. Are you a coward, or a leader? They'll know soon enough. You're not worried about them. They play their cards loosely enough.

But then she comes slinking to you, her footsteps light and weightless and she moves through air with this languid grace that tugs at this long forgotten spark of jealousy or envy or something that curdles through your throat and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It's a knee-jerk, gut reaction and you dislike her almost immediately.

She's not like the others.

You want to kick yourself for thinking this but she's exotic. Dark hair, full lips, cheekbones you want to brush your thumbs across. Dangerous. She's small and lithe and all sharp edges like rooftop corners and barbed wire fences. Your heart's pounding a tattoo, and hers is like a circuit board, electric. Thrill incarnate. Reminds you of the dark roads and even darker alleyways where you have to watch your step or risk falling into the abyss. Her cursory gaze slides right through you - a bit like Jacknife's - across the glossy edges, burning as it goes. You're not sure if its from indignation or something else but you can feel it in your bones.

"Faith," she says, in a low voice, like the flickering, detached glow of the city lights after nightfall.

You're not sure if she's being cryptic on purpose or if she's speaking in code but your mouth takes the plunge for you before your thoughts can sort themselves like the pieces of a puzzle, "What?"

"I'm Faith," she repeats, with a look that keeps you up for the rest of the week.

* * *

**[266.7 km / 165.7 miles]**

It's only been about two weeks but the others like you already. You go drinking with them after missions. Training with them before missions. It's shallow and fun and carefree and it feels like living, a bit of colour against the clinical, stark white of what passes for culture in this city. And one thing that you cannot ignore is that Faith is never to be found. She doesn't take part, doesn't care, doesn't notice. She slips in and out of the den like a shadow. You've started to notice how the others treat her - a strange mix of reverence, respect and cold politeness.

Faith is quiet, reserved, judgemental - you can see it in that dark, dark gaze, black like a bullet. Not that she'd ever look at you in the eyes. She doesn't talk to you, doesn't care that you're around, even when Merc tells her to work with you. She treats you like a runner bag, not a partner, and you loathe her indifference. Sure she ignores the others a little too but you've never been just completely _ignored_, not you, never you. People gravitated to you, revolved around you - but her? You're like a speck of dust, like gum at the bottom of her shoe. And that's not where you belong.

She's good - she definitely is. She knows the city like the back of her hand, she moves with it instinctively, like the wind around tight curved corners, whistling through the gaps in between buildings, slipping through the smallest of gaps and over the highest of obstacles - intangible, invisible, yet still every inch a force of nature. You've come not to expect her to speak - but it's not like she has to, to teach you. The only thing is, you find yourself memorizing how she moves instead of the city like you're supposed to. But how can you not?

The city is beautiful, of course, in its sterility. Its streets and walls and buildings chalk white like bone. But there is no colour, there is no excitement to see - not like Faith. Faith is slick and economical in her movement, there is no show, not like the other runners, not like you - she moves like a machine, a living machine of colour and impact in a city of ghosts. She is pale in her stillness, flushed in the heat of the sun, all taut muscle when she runs and blue veins and red breath and so _alive_.

* * *

**[894.2 km / 555.6 miles]**

She pats you on the shoulder as if you were playing beer pong or something and says, "You alright?" and turns away before you can even reply. You stare at the blood, doubled over with your hands on your knees, so vivid, thick, warm, trickling down your leg like a spider web - it's kind of throbbing and it's torn through your favourite pair of pants. Maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's cause you're fed up, but she's been treating you like you don't exist for weeks and you've done more runs with her than anyone else in the group and you just got shot at - almost kneecapped - and all she has to say is _you alright_ - and really it's not like you did anything to her to deserve this -

So just before she can pick back up into a jog, you lunge forward for her one ungloved hand and pull her back and she looks at you - finally - really, truly, _looks_ at you with this expression that makes your heart plummet and she's really just small and light and you're bringing her closer before you know what you're doing and she stops you, with a hand on your chest and a finger pressed to your lips, the dark eyes no longer flat and metal cold like ammunition, but swirling greys and black like a storm, "Do you really want to do this now?" she asks, and you think you hear the tiniest of cracks, like the web that causes foundations to crumble and collapse.

"If not now, when?" you laugh, a little delirious at the feel of her beneath your fingertips even through the fabric and you're not sure if this burning is from the sun or the running but -

"You're bleeding, Cel," she says flatly.

And you're too stuck on how your name sounds rolling off her tongue that you almost forgot.

* * *

**[900.8 km / 559.7 miles]**

"That was pretty good hate sex," you say breathless, laughing, skin still slicked with sweat and practically sticking to the mattress where the sheets have slid, dripped off the edges like overflowing rain. Her fingers are tracing undeterminable shapes on your stomach and she props herself up to one elbow and looks at you - really _looks_ at you, like she did on that rooftop and her lips quirk into the tiniest of smiles, but it's enough to wind you, enough to make your heart cramp and your lungs gasp, and because you're not sure what to say and you don't have enough oxygen to laugh, so you reach over, pressing your palm to her cheek and she turns into your touch.

Then she curls her legs around yours and uses her whole body to pull you closer so she can press the lightest of kisses to the corner of your mouth, lingering, just a moment, before she trails up your jawline until coming up your ear, breathing lightly, like a breeze, touch and go on hot concrete that does not yield - except you do, "Does this feel like hate, to you?"

You can feel her pressed against you, taut muscle, warm and beating heart and some how she's still not close enough, so you pull her down on top of you, your noses practically colliding, if it weren't for both your runners' reflexes.

You're not sure if its because you've been working together for the last few weeks or if its just because you're made for eachother - it certainly feels like it, like you're two jagged mirror pieces, all the shattered parts and sharp edges and crumbling sand glass slipping through the cracks, fitting together to finally show a reflection you can recognize.

* * *

**[3891.7 km / 2418.2 miles]**

It's easy. It's scary how easy it is to be with her. It's feels more natural than running. Now she looks at you all the time and you realized why she never did before. Because when you look back, your heart stops and your breath catches in your throat and you need to breathe to run.

And run is what you both do, during the day, at night, whenever there are jobs and there are many jobs for the both of you. Merc hasn't even bothered trying to separate you, seeing as how you both rocket through lucrative contracts without a hitch.

You're not sure if the others know, but you can see them looking at you, Jacknife in particular. You're certain the whispers follow you out of the den when you leave.

Even if you can't hear them through the buzz in your ears and the flush of anticipation roaring through your veins.

Even if you don't really care.

* * *

**[7434.3 km / 4619.5 miles]**

Your throat is burning. The screams are shredding through the cartilage and it can only stretch so far before it shatters like the windows crunching beneath your feet and the bones beneath your fists. Time slows to a crawl, but not enough for you to reach her as you see her plummet from the sky. Blues crumple in your wake, like puppets without strings. The clatter of body armor and guns skidding across the marble tiles rhythmic, like raindrops.

You slide down spiralling staircases, the world spinning in a blur. Vaulting over a railings, breath ragged, echoing off the roof of your mouth, feet pounding, heels hurting from how hard you're driving them into the unforgiving floor. Then you see her lying there, this black, white, tiny body, like a broken stain glass angel and you can't stop yourself, you're not even thinking as you drop to your knees, next to her. Cuts dragging across your knees and the pain sharp and insistent like needles. But it's nothing compared to how your insides reel, unmoored, when you press your palm, shaking, to her chest and her heartbeat is faint, barely a flutter. You're not even sure it's really there or if it's because your hands shaking.

There is a roaring in your ears and you stare at your hands like they don't belong to you, until you decide you won't accept this.

You cannot accept this.

WIth unerring calm, you patch in Merc and call in all the favours you have, even from people you don't want to let in - but there's no choice, you're not giving this up, not now, not when you just started.

You're not sure what's going to come through the doors you've opened, but Faith doesn't have to know. So you sit beside her, too afraid to move, bleeding into the floor as the mirror puzzle pieces shine crimson and white like stars, while your heart slows to an insistent beat, in tune with the mantra you don't even realizing is moving your mouth.

Faith just has to stay, because you're not ready to let her go.

* * *

**[12423.0 km / 7719.3 miles]**

Promises you've made chase you across the city as you twist through corners and shadowy alleys, trying to lose them, lose yourself. It was worth it, you know, because the alternative was unthinkable.

But you can hear the clock ticking, everywhere in the city, like a pulse, like the thunderstorm pouring rain flooding the roads like your mind. You feel the ice cold water creeping down your back, freezing as it goes, making you brittle enough that if you make one wrong move everything will snap and shatter and you'll be left with the barren white metropolis and even the sun and all its cracked reflections won't be able to warm you up again.

Without realizing, you've made your way to the highest rooftop on the city, instinctively knowing she'll be waiting there. Even if only half constructed, all exposed bones and victim to the elements, it's as safe as safe can be, from the blues, from other runners - because there's only the two of you of such caliber.

When you skid to a stop, perilously close to the lip of the building, drenched and wet and half drowned, she melts out of the shadows, warm and dry, with a kiss filled with liquid fire. You can taste the bittersweet end on the tip of your tongue, along with the words you still haven't said. And you open your mouth to inhale all the fumes and the fuel that sets your heart pounding loud enough your entire body is pulsing, firecracker reactions to every touch, even in the cold.

"Faith," you breathe, and she doesn't let you speak, doesn't give you rest, but maybe that's ok, because she's the only thing you can lose yourself in. There's not much space between you and it's brutally cold up here, exposed to the elements, but she's warm, even though she's just as wet as you are now. The shivers aren't so bad when you're in her arms.

Lightning flashes around you and thunder rolls around the building, shaking its foundation, shaking _you_ to the core and she whispers "I love you," or maybe that's just the wind whistling or the rain hitting the metal skeleton frame.

You want to say it back but instead you bite your tongue and press your lips into her shoulder as the building sways and the world tilts and shakes splitting apart at your feet, but this isn't such a bad way to go, you think.

* * *

**[15190.2 km / 9438.8 miles]**

You knew it wouldn't - couldn't last. Happiness never did. It was fleeting, fleeting like that moment in the air where gravity reasserts its hold on you, where momentum is reversed and you find yourself sinking, fingers outstretched, grasping and desperate to hold on to that brief moment of freedom.

One thing led to another and before you knew it the dark underbelly of the pristine city was starting to bleed its way through the layers. You're a runner - running was your thing, you know? You never planned on falling - least of all for the _one_ person who was better than you at doing what you loved more than anything else, but gravity never lets you go.

So when you find out that Callaghan, cursed Callaghan - the disease masquerading as the cure, trimmed nails, wax face and disarming politician's smile and corporate cut fabric like the jagged mirror pieces of a broken reflection - needs a scapegoat for Pope and picks the one person you wished you never met.

It all makes sense. It all falls into place. All the pieces of your existence and those fragmented memories that make up your life. And you're not sure how you've become who you are, only that there's no doubt, and no turning back. You couldn't say those three words to her, but she has to know.

You almost want to laugh at the irony of it. Everything ends like it begins. And you both started without words. They shouldn't matter now. Because this isn't a route. This isn't something you can run from. There are no alternate paths - everything has led to this, all your mistakes, all your weaknesses, everything you done has led to this very moment of your undoing.

Faith will never forgive you.

But you _know_ Faith.

You don't know her sister.


End file.
